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I am wrestling with despair

Every day is worse than the one before a killing of all that was legislated to be kind, helpful, healthy for all living creatures, prisoners of this earth. The meanness of it gets me, the hatred of who have less money and things and thus count less and should be punished or simply pushed into some locked closet of poverty and forgotten except for occasional rhetoric blaming them for the state of that closet. How do these men stand being so cold and full of malice? They have plenty left to flog women for having bodies. How dare women desire, how dare we choose, say no, resist, insist. I can’t give up, no matter how cozy that looks by contrast with all this jabbering, this attempt to organize our anger into some kind of weapon.

Marge Piercy is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Made in Detroit.